


to lose my life

by wearthesun



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Angst, Completed, Established Relationship, Good Ganondorf, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Sorry, Lots of Angst, M/M, Past Lives, Reincarnation, TW: Blood, TW: Violence, cursed ganondorf, ganlink, gerudo-raised link, not specifically game related, tw: death, tw: suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:00:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22163701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearthesun/pseuds/wearthesun
Summary: Link looks at him now like he used to before the malice destroyed their lives. Like he hasn't killed hundreds since they last saw each other. Like he hasn't become evil incarnate. Like he's still worthy of love.It's so tender, after such cruelty, that Gan wants to hold Link and never ever let him go.But he knows those glorious days are over.
Relationships: Ganondorf & Link (Legend of Zelda), Ganondorf/Link (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 141





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> approximate ages  
> link: ~ 20  
> gan: ~ 25  
> zelda: ~ 20
> 
> title is from the white lies song of the same name  
>   
> this is a finished work, there are more notes in the last chapter ♥

The malice leaves him sharply, and when its hold finally, finally releases him, it's like a breath of fresh air after almost drowning. Each time is more painful, feels more insurmountable to withstand.

Ganondorf exhales deeply, allowing himself to just _be._ When the malice takes over, it is undeniable, unbeatable, and inevitable.

As he regains control of his body and mind, he analyzes his surroundings. He knows where he is before he can open his eyes.

There is very little light, and the first thing he sees are cell bars. His wrists and ankles are shackled in chains, his arms bound behind his back. His whole body feels heavy and hurt, he realizes he's bleeding, but can't tell from where. He still wears armor – he can't call it his, he has no recollection of making, finding, or buying it – it is broad, dark, excessive in every way. His clothes, black, though he despises the color, are impossibly stained scarlet. His long red hair is unbraided, wild locks stuck to his face with blood.

He is not alone for long. Voices are arguing outside – a woman, several men.

Link's voice is a lighthouse in the night.

Ganondorf has never been more relieved, and terrified, to hear it. Guards – the other voices – try to stop him from approaching the cell, but Link shoves them back. The woman follows him. Ganondorf has only met the princess once, and she is unmistakable. Regal in every sense of the word, elegant and determined, her face somehow both severe and compassionate.

Link rushes to Ganondorf, ignoring the guards' protests. The princess stands by the door and doesn't try to stop him, she orders her soldiers to stay outside.

The state of Gan stops him right in his tracks.

No one has healed him, which makes no difference, as he knows he can't die anyway. Not by Zelda's hand, and certainly not by his own.

Gan can see, and feel, Link's heart break right there and then. His own echoes, all too familiar with what must happen soon.

“What is going on?” Link kneels in front of Gan. His eyes stay fixed on him, as he asks the princess, anger clear in his voice, “why is he bleeding?”

“He surrendered. He came here willingly.” The princess is the picture of calm, but Gan can sense unease in her answer. She is not as resolved as she tries to make it seem.

“Then why is he in chains?”

“Link, he murdered hundreds. Villages were burned to the ground.”

Link turns indignantly to look up at her. “That was not him –”

“How was I to know? In the past – I had no reason to think the malice was controlling him. My soldiers have been looking for him for weeks. What were they supposed to do when he showed up at our gates? The soldiers attacked, but we realized too late that he wasn't fighting back. When he fell, I gave the order to take him alive.”

“You hurt him.” Link opens his pouch, takes out potions and bandages. He begins to attend to the wounds. The princess asks the guards to light a few torches. Gan isn't sure why he is allowed this kindness.

“There's no point,” Gan says as he tries to stop him. Link doesn't listen, and proceeds to remove the armor piece by piece. Too focused on the injuries, he doesn't ask where it came from. Gan doesn't have the energy to argue.

“Something's wrong,” Link says as he applies potion to the largest cuts. “It's not healing. . . . the wound seems. . . . frozen. It's not healing. What is this?”

“Please stay back,” Gan says. “I could hurt you. I don't understand it.”

“What? Gan, tell me what happened. Why aren't you healing?”

Gan stays silent as he looks upon the love of his life. His sky-blue eyes betray unshed tears. His golden hair has come undone in places, and Gan feels the familiar urge to tuck the strands back behind his ears. He seems tired, as if he hasn't rested in days. The longing to touch Link's fair skin is an ache. The chains feel like fire around his limbs.

Gan has loved Link since the instant he laid eyes on him, on a blazing summer day almost twenty years ago, when he found a half-dead Hylian baby in the sands. He was only a child himself, a Gerudo boy from the desert, but even then he knew how deadly his home could be, to his people but mostly to outsiders. He hadn't hesitated – he had unwrapped his protective cloths to shield the baby as much as he could, and ran with him back to the town, dropping the bags of fruits he had come to fetch.

His mothers asked many questions, almost none he had the answer to. Where had he found him? What was a Hylian boy doing in the desert? Was the baby lost or abandoned? Would anyone come looking for him?

No one ever did, and their questions were never answered. They all agreed: the child would be raised as one of their own, for bringing him back to Hyrule was too dangerous – Hylians were not known for being decent to the Gerudo people. It was most likely they would be accused of stealing the child and jailed as thieves.

Having been the one to find the child, Ganondorf got to be the one to name him. He chose Link, because from that first instant, he felt a deep connection to the child that he couldn't yet explain.

Link was cared for and loved by every member of the tribe. He was an irresistible child, bringing happiness to anyone he met, and while his complexion was far paler than his family's, he was just as Gerudo as they were.

He and Ganondorf were inseparable and spent every one of their days together. They loved each other immediately, fundamentally, profoundly, and this devotion evolved with the days, with the years; until the day Link, then fifteen years old, had surprised Gan with a shy kiss on a cold winter night. Gan, who had had feelings for Link for the longest time, but had been afraid he did not feel the same way, had never acted on them. That night, he returned the kiss with all the love he could possibly communicate. It was clumsy but tender, it felt like they had all the time in the world to learn how to kiss the one you loved properly, and for a few years, they did.

They haven't seen each other in weeks, months, ever since the malice first took ahold of Ganondorf. It came like a thief in the night, unannounced, quiet and deadly. It possessed him so fully, he came to a whole day later, miles away from the comfort of his bed and Link's arms. He woke up covered in ashes and blood, in the ruins of a desert settlement not far from his own village. He understood at once that he had caused the deaths of his neighbors. He realized, terrorized, that the curse he had learned of in fairytales and old books, that he had until now not allowed himself to believe in, had come for him. He knew the malice for what it was – a calling of blood, a lust of killing, and a death sentence.

Foolishly, stupidly, he had returned home in an effort to find a way to defeat it.

The next day, seven of his sisters were found dead, their bodies burned almost unrecognizably.

So he ran. Horrified of what this evil could do to Link and his loved ones, his sisters, his mothers, his friends, he had left without a word, hoping he could come upon a solution in his travels.

In his waking moments, Ganondorf tried running as far as he could from civilization. But the malice was ruthless, and possessed him more and more, bringing him back to where life dwelled, until he lost entire days, and woke up in more ruins and rubble, causing more death everywhere it took him. Villages and towns were lost, as he murdered dozens, hundreds, women and men and children and anything and everything that was alive, in only a few weeks, with no hope of salvation.

The Goddesses must have thought he deserved to be inflicted more torture, for when the malice came, so did his memories. Images of countless past lives, lives in which he lived only to kill, his heart full of hate and anger, his magic used only to conquer and destroy. Lives in which he wasn't even human but beasts, creatures of nightmare, bringing calamity and misery to everything he touched.

He didn't understand how he could have ever been this evil. He understood then why the malice had tracked him down, its curse a malevolent birthright that in this life, he never would have thought to seek.

Ganondorf was desperate and hopeless. The guilt broke him, for he couldn't help but feel responsible for the all the killing. He couldn't remember anything he did when the malice took over, but it was _his_ body it was controlling, _his_ hands that called the deadly fire, that wielded his many savage weapons. He had caused unspeakable demise over every age.

In despair and sorrow, he attempted to take his own life.

But death was too great a mercy for such a killer, and the malice, its will louder than his own, brought him back. Again, and again, and again.

Ganondorf was aware that the princess had sent her army after him, for he often found the corpses of soldiers in the havoc he caused. If this incarnation was anything like her others, she would not rest until he was stopped. His last hope was to surrender to her and hope that she could do what he hadn't been able to, and so he headed to Hyrule Castle Town.

He was himself when the soldiers attacked him, and did nothing to defend himself. He felt and deserved every blow, each a reminder that he was not yet allowed to die. The malice had returned soon after he fell, and he woke up in the cell.

He never thought he would ever be so _grateful_ to the princess for imprisoning him.

She had come to see him in lockup. He was aware from the moment he saw her that she recognized him, that she remembered too. He barely had to ask. She used her light magic right away; not because she knew he had to die, but because she knew he _wanted_ to. But she was unable to end his misery.

Both realized what had to be done.

The princess sent word to Link of Gan's whereabouts.

He arrived the next day.

“Gan?”

Link looks at him now like he used to before the malice destroyed their lives. Like he hasn't killed hundreds since they last saw each other. Like he hasn't become evil incarnate. Like he's still worthy of _love._

It's so tender, after such cruelty, that Gan wants to hold Link and never ever let him go.

But he knows those glorious days are over.

And he remembers Link's past lives. He already knows how his own will end.

“I've been looking for you for weeks,” Link says, and Gan is deeply ashamed of the awful things Link must have witnessed in his wake. “They said a beast was unleashed on the world. They said a Gerudo man was ravaging villages. They said – they said you killed people.”

“They were not lying,” Gan answers, his voice a whisper. “It's the malice. It appears when it wants to, it takes over completely, and it destroys all life around me.”

“But it's not _you._ You're not a beast. You're Gan. My Gan. We can find a way to stop it, free you from it.”

“It can't be stopped. I know this in my bones. Even if it could, I do not deserve to be saved. Not after what I did.”

Gan can see Link refusing his answer, can read the defiance in his eyes, the courage. It is as familiar to Gan as his own name.

Link, having stopped trying to heal the wounds, moves closer to Gan. Slowly, to avoid hurting him further, he settles in an awkward embrace. Gan wants nothing more than to break free of his shackles and hold him tight.

But the malice, vicious, feels the love in Gan's heart and feeds on it. It rises in his veins, burning every part of him. He tries to warn Link, but he is too late.

The evil takes over, and darkness encloses him.


	2. Chapter 2

Link has never felt more scared in his life than he does now, nestled in Gan's arms, the place he is supposed to be safest in the world. He refuses to believe that there is no hope. He has traveled for weeks to find Gan, and even after finding only death and desolation, he knew Gan was not the one to blame. Even now, he remains convinced he can save him.

As if in an effort to crush his faith, the malice surfaces. Gan's body feels heated, then hot, then burning under him. His touch hurts and bites like poison and flames. A dark purple glow eclipses the cell. Link looks up at Gan and his heart stops when he sees his eyes shine not bright gold, but deep red.

Frightened, Link tries to recoil from Gan, but the malice, of which he has only witnessed the destructive aftermath, is stronger than both of them. Gan – _it_ – breaks the shackles restraining his arms, and grabs Link by his wrist. He screams as the malice, a heavy burgundy fog, envelops his arm. The very brush of it scalds his skin, his veins, his bones, his soul –

The guards, on Zelda's order, act fast. Link feels paralyzed, can't feel his arm, is too stunned to defend himself; doing so means hurting Gan, and that is unthinkable. One guard throws him to the side, while the other strikes Gan.

“Don't hurt him!”

The malice is fast, and both guards are dead, their bodies charred, by the time Link is able to get up. Zelda walks in then, and uses her magic to bind Gan once more. The new chains radiate with her light. The sight of Gan possessed is a horror beyond words, he hardly looks like himself, the malice covers his entire body with its vile purple mist. He howls, and the voice coming out isn't his own, isn't even human. Link looks deep into the glowing crimson eyes, but can't find any hint of the man he loves there.

Even then, Link won't permit him to be hurt. He stands in front of Gan, clutching his wounded wrist. He stares right into the princess' eyes.

“If you touch him, I will kill you.”

He can tell from the look in her eyes, from the slight falter he sees there, that she believes him. She takes a step back. “Give me your arm.”

He hesitates, but agrees. He has to hold his damaged arm with his other one to reach out to her. Light illuminates her hands, and her magic heals the wound in a second. The solace Link feels as the malice dissipates is immense.

The screams stop. More guards come into the cell to take away the bodies of their comrades. Link turns to Gan, and is overwhelmed with relief as he sees Gan regain control of himself. The purple glow evaporates, and Gan's colors come back to normal. His eyes shine their usual gold; Link has always loved Gan's eyes, they glint like the desert sun, as warm as Gan's heart.

“Gan?”

“Link – are you okay? Did I hurt you? I'm sorry. I'm so sorry – I never meant to hurt you – never you.”

“I'm okay,” Link says as he rushes to his side again, “ _you_ didn't hurt me. I know you never would. We'll end this malice, I promise you. I'll save you.”

“There is nothing to be done. This evil, this malice, it can not be destroyed. Only I can be.”

“What? No –”

“I have tried to do it myself but it won't let me,” Gan says, shame and guilt preventing him from looking into Link's eyes. “It controls me and locks me out of my own body, my own mind.”

“What do you mean you tried –”

“I can't go on like this. I came here to end it. I thought maybe she could,” he continues, raising his eyes to the princess, “but I was wrong. I can't go on like this. I can't keep killing everything I see, everyone I care for. I can't control it. And I _can't_ kill you, love. I can't –”

“No – we'll find a way. There has to be something!”

“Link, please.” Gan stares right into his eyes. He almost never calls him by the name he gave him, only when he is serious or mad, and Link senses then how desperate Gan is. That he is begging. “You have to help me. You were following me, you saw the ruins, the bodies, all the ashes in my wake. I can't let it take over again. Help me put an end to it. I am begging you.”

Link recoils at his words. “What are you asking me?”

Gan is silent. He can't bring himself to utter the words.

“No,” Link says. “I can't. Not this. What makes you think it would even work? If she couldn't do it, or you, why could I?”

The princess, still standing by the cell bars, sighs. She and Gan lock eyes. “Zelda,” he says, and Link notices the informality of calling the princess of Hyrule by her birth name.

Confused, he turns to her as well and is surprised to see that her whole demeanor has changed – she no longer appears fierce and steadfast, but defeated, a strange melancholy in her green eyes.

Gan breaks the silence. “We have to tell him.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Tell me what?” Link asks them both, and to Gan, “do you know her?”

Zelda just watches him. It exasperates him. “Tell me what?!”

“You're always the last one to remember, Link,” she says, quiet, almost to herself. “You're always the one who doesn't know.”

“Remember what? What don't I know?”

Gan speaks up from behind him. “Our lives are not our own. They never were.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You've heard the stories, haven't you?” the princess asks. “About the Triforce, and the three who always return, age after age. The hero, the princess and the demon.”

An strange image flashes in Link's mind. He seems himself wearing green. But green is not a color he favors.

The vision disappears as soon as it arrives, faster than a bolt of lightning in the sky, almost fast enough to be forgotten. Almost.

“I – what do children's tales have to do with this?”

“They are not tales,” Gan says. “Just like the malice isn't.”

Growing up, Gan and Link have been told stories and legends, some old enough to have passed into myth. There were many variations, but all told the same tale: once, upon every age, a great evil would rise and decimate the land. A young maiden, often the land's princess, would call for aid, and a young hero would ascend and answer her plea. Together, the princess and the hero would defeat the evil and bring peace back to the world, their combined wisdom and courage overcoming the powerful malice.

Gan and Link's mothers warned them of the importance of those legends, making them commit the stories to memory. They were boys then and still young enough to believe everything their mothers told them, and so they obeyed. As they grew, the tales became things of the past, children's games; but they were never forgotten.

Link isn't sure he ever stopped believing the stories. He can't understand why he always connected to them, since that was all they were supposed to be: stories.

Part of him now believes Gan and the princess. He knows they aren't just _stories._ He's always had a feeling.

They were warnings.

Which doesn't make any sense.

And why are they talking about _stories_ anyway?

He turns to Gan and moves closer to him once more. “Can you remove those chains?” he asks the princess. “He won't hurt us. He won't hurt me.”

“But I did,” Gan answers.

“I trust you –”

“You shouldn't,” Gan says. “Your faith in me is misplaced. I don't have a right to it anymore.”

“I don't understand. I don't know what you're both talking about.” The princess hasn't moved, so Link tries to remove the shackles himself. The magic infused in them is too strong.

“It's all about the stories, Link. The evil, the maiden and –”

“The hero almost always prevails,” Gan finishes for her. “You know this.”

Another image bursting through his head: he carries a sword, a magic sword he found in a mystical forest. The sword feels familiar. It feels like home. But Link favors the bow, and rarely uses swords.

The vision is almost forgotten, but sticks to his brain.

Green – a sword of legend –

“You are the hero of Hyrule,” Zelda says, and he knows this is true, he knows it deep in his soul, more sure than he ever was of anything, no matter how much he doesn't want to be. “The malice in Ganondorf is the evil that must be annihilated. Or the entire kingdom will burn.”

A new vision, far from the pleasantness of the previous ones. The silhouette of an enormous creature, the shape of a boar, tusks aimed to the sky, made of deep purple smoke.

Link, dumbfounded, silent, turns to Gan. He has never seen his love so crushed. Link looks for the comfort of his golden eyes, but Gan is unable to face him.

“Destroying the evil is the hero's destiny and burden,” the princess adds behind him.

“Only you can save us,” Gan says to the floor. He looks up then, his eyes impossibly sad. There is no comfort to be found there. Link knows what he is going to say before he says it. “You have to kill me, my love.”


	4. Chapter 4

Link can't help it.

He laughs.

It's more of a scoff, really. A sneer. A nervous reaction to a ludicrous idea. Because this is all this is: ludicrous. Ridiculous. Nothing to laugh at.

Gan and the princess stare at him.

“That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard,” is all he can say, even though deep down, he knows it's true.

“This is not a joke, Link,” the princess scolds him.

“But it has to be,” he says, serious and somber now. “You can't expect me to murder the man I love because a damn fairytale told you I had to.”

She scowls at him for his swearing. Link rarely swears, only when he is truly furious.

“Do you really not remember?” Gan asks, sighing. “Why are you always the only one of us blessed with forgetting?”

“Remember what? Gan, what aren't you telling me?”

The princess finally moves from the bars to be closer to both of them. Link hasn't left Gan's side, refusing to be scared of him even after the malice tried to hurt him. The wound it inflicted on his arm has completely vanished thanks to her magic. “It is like Ganondorf said, our lives –”

“– are not our own, I know. What does it mean?”

“We have lived many, and we live one,” she continues. “From the beginning of time, we three have been connected. The malice has always existed. It was born as a curse, the promise of demise. It is neverending.”

Yet another image reveals itself, filling him with dread; a devil, a monster with flaming orange hair, its body covered in gleaming black scales, its shape horribly familiar.

“Whose demise?” he asks, his voice nothing more than a murmur.

“Hyrule's,” Gan answers beside him. “The curse means to cause the end of all Hyrule. This malice lives in my veins, Link. I can feel it even as we speak, like a serpent under my skin. I do not know when it will surface again, but I know it will. Just like I know it will obliterate me, and you, and this whole world, if I am allowed to live. I know this, because I remember it.”

“But it doesn't make sense,” Link objects. “How can you remember something that never happened?”

“Link,” the princess calls, “you must remember something. Search your heart, search your mind. You know what it is we speak of.”

“It's – it's not possible,” he stammers, almost to himself. “It's not – they're visions. Only images, barely even dreams. Hallucinations. That's all they can be.”

“Tell us what you see,” Gan says.

“I –” A dozen images manifest at once, adding themselves to the puzzle in his mind. Gan, wearing black and gold finery and jewels too extravagant for him to wear in this life, sitting on a throne, a large white scar glaring from his chest. The sea, an endless sea, a young pirate girl captaining a large boat, a girl who looks like Zelda if she had grown up anywhere but in her castle. Himself again, hurt and bruised and bloodied, facing gigantic machines that look like mechanical spiders, their eyes glowing the same red Gan's were minutes earlier. “I see – us. But they're not us, they're –”

“Our past,” Zelda finishes. “Old ages. I don't know how far they go back. Nor how many we have lived through. I have had visions of our past lives since I was a child, they became clear and started to make sense a few years ago, when I turned seventeen. We have had many names, in my first life I was named –”

“Hylia,” Link says.

“Yes.”

“You were the Goddess. You tried to seal the evil, Demise. The origin of the malice, of the curse, of –”

The last visions are knife wounds in his heart. He sees them as clearly as if he had lived them, because he has; his sword driving through Ganondorf, again and and again and again, and he knows, he knows beyond a doubt –

“I kill you,” he whispers, his voice breaking. He buries his face in Gan's chest. “I kill you. Every age, every time, I kill you.”

Gan rests his head on Link's. There are no words to be said, so he remains silent.


	5. Chapter 5

Zelda watches as the hero holds the demon, his arms wrapped tight, his hands gripping his long, unbraided red hair. Except he is not a demon, he is simply Ganondorf, a member of the Gerudo tribe cursed with the most powerful evil of all times. Her heart breaks at the sight, and the unfairness of it is a burden she wishes she could help them carry.

The most she can do is offer them some solace, some peace, before what she is certain must happen. Compassionate and sympathetic, confident in Link's remembrance, she knows none of them are at risk this instant. With a wave of her hand, she dissolves the magic from the shackles and removes the ones holding his hands. He looks up at her, more grateful, his eyes kinder than she has ever seen him in all their lives. She never would have thought she would witness such a gentle look on Ganondorf's face.

He holds Link close, their bodies touching in every place they can, Link's face nuzzled in his neck, Ganondorf's hand gently cradling his head. Zelda has rarely seen such an expression of love in her many lives.

She has seldom seen Link love so deeply, in all his lives. She hadn't met him in this life until now, but she has been fond of him ever since she started remembering the love they both shared in some of their other existences. As Hylia, she felt a deep admiration for the hero, and though she was a Goddess, yet unfamiliar with human feelings, she thought her sentiments resembled love. In every single age she can recall, she has cared for Link. He was always fierce and fearless, ready to put his life on the line for anyone, loved ones and strangers alike. She witnessed his courage moments ago, when he stood up to her and threatened to kill her if she were to hurt Ganondorf again. She has not often witnessed him be so bold, and she has seen him battle monsters of the worst kind.

Zelda smiles at Ganondorf, this incarnation nowhere near those same monsters, a sorrowful smile that she hopes conveys her every thought. She wishes they all had more time, she wishes she could have gotten to know this man and this version of the hero. She can't recall another life in which the two were in love.

She is sorry. It is worse, somehow, that Ganondorf was _good_ and still cursed, that he did nothing to deserve the evil that came for him. She wonders, blasphemously, why the Goddesses thought this was fair. This is the first life she can remember in which Ganondorf has not tried to overthrow her and seize control of her land, that all the death he caused were unintentional. She isn't sure it has happened before, she has never known a Ganondorf not driven by hate and power. She hopes at least one existed.

It is worse, because in spite of it, he still has to be sacrificed, and it is worse, because his executioner is to be his lover.

And it is worse, because it is painfully clear, to anyone who would set their eyes on them, that the love they feel for each other is unconditional, profound, absolute.

Zelda turns and leaves the cell. She knows the malice can take over at any time, but she also knows the two have to be allowed to say their goodbyes. This Ganondorf deserves at least this, and these last moments are all she can give him. She is glad Link hasn't arrived too late, and that they can be together one last time.

She stays outside with the guards, a few feet away, praying they both have enough time. She knows it is not enough, but it will have to be.


	6. Chapter 6

More than anything, Gan wishes he could stop time. His arms hold Link as if he could shelter him from every evil in the world, as he did when he found him in the desert, so small and weak and sun-ravaged. But now the evil resides in him. He never wants to let him go.

Link's tears stain his damaged clothes and fall onto the open, unhealing, unbleeding injuries. The armor he wore when the malice controlled him stays discarded on the ground, where Link removed it. The wounds don't hurt anymore. Nothing hurts more than Link crying in his arms. Gan knows he has to die, and he will do so willingly, fearlessly, if it means saving thousands, millions, Link most of all.

What breaks his heart is that Link is the only one who can help him. “It's alright, my love.”

“No – it's not _alright_! No. I love you. Don't ask me to do this. Don't ask me to give up on you, because I can't do that. I'll do anything you ask, always, but not this.”

“I wish I didn't have to ask this of you. But you're the hero.”

“If this is what being the hero means, then I don't want to be the hero. A hero doesn't murder their loves ones.”

“I am more sorry than you can ever know, that it has to be you. I wish there was another way. More than anything, I wish I could spare you this pain.” Softly, Gan kisses the top of Link's head, still hidden from view on his chest. “I've loved you since the first time I laid eyes on you.”

Link breaks from their embrace. He stands and starts pacing in the small cell. Even as a young child, Link never could hold still for very long. Especially when he was anxious. Or scared. “Don't do this!” he says. “Don't talk like this, don't talk like you're going to die. Don't you dare. I told you I won't do it. Not again, not this time.”

“Do you remember many lives?” Gan asks, struggling to stay calm. If he breaks down, he fears he might never stop crying. He needs to be at peace, he needs his mind to be quiet, if he is to ask Link to end his life. He can't let himself be mad, for the malice thrives on anger. “I do. I remember being a thief, a murderer. I remember hating the desert, can you imagine? Hating our home. I resented its searing sun, the insufferable life it forced me and my sisters to lead. The Hylians called us brigands. Savages. I craved revenge against them, for trapping us in the harsh sands. I craved the winds of Hyrule, its green fields and gleaming waters. Time and time again, I conspired for it to be mine, I killed for it. I wanted the whole kingdom for myself, and I believed it was my right. Who could ever be being this arrogant? This full of hatred and fury? This selfish?”

Gan sighs. The phantom of his past lives' loathing haunts and shames him. And yet, Link looks at him with love in his eyes. “When the malice took over me in this life, I started remembering my old incarnations. With every death, the memories became sharper and clearer. I witnessed all the death I caused, and I was disgusted. I hated myself. And then the malice forced me to kill in its name all over again. I would wake up in charred corpses, and I wanted only to die.”

“That was not you. It was –”

“The curse, I know. But what if it was me? Part of me? I was not evil in all my lives. Some started just as this one did, and I grew up loved, was raised to be just and kind. In some lives I was never obsessed with power. But still, the malice always emerged, and they all ended the same way. In blood and violence.”

“Not this time,” Link says, unyielding. “I won't let it.”

“You're wrong, love. It is already happening. I have massacred entire villages. I've been killing anything I could find for weeks. It's not going to stop! I ran away because I was scared of what I would do to you after I murdered our sisters. Our sisters – and now, you've just found me, and I almost burned your arm off.”

“I'm fine now –”

“Link,” Gan implores, the use of his name deliberate, grave, a far cry from his usual _love,_ “can you honestly tell me you would let me live, and risk thousands of lives doing so? I know your heart, I know this is unacceptable to you, as it is to me. Even for my sake.”

Link hasn't stopped pacing and can scarcely look away from the floor. Gan can tell he is beginning to understand, to accept the undeniable. “No, I – there has to be a way – something, anything –”

“Do you think I want to die?” Oh Goddesses, how he wants to _live._ “In a Hylian dungeon, of all places? I always thought I would die in the desert, in the unforgiving sands that were my home. Under the stars and in your arms, after a lifetime spent together. Not in chains, not so far from the warmth of the sun.”

He hasn't seen the desert in months, but after having spent his entire life there, his mind can imagine it with perfect clarity. He pictures the seas of sands, his colorful village, the oasis by their tents, the silver moon shining down on his family. He so badly hoped to see it one last time.

“Then let's go back,” Link pleads, “let's go back to the desert. Let's go home, Gan.”

“You and I both know what happens if I return. I would murder our entire family. The malice wouldn't even let me try to find a way. But this doesn't matter, because I know there is none.”

“We could seal it, like Hylia did –”

“You know this would not work. It never did. Even if there was a solution, one of us would have found it by now. We've had millenniums.”

“No, Gan. We've barely had twenty years.”

Gan despises how right Link is. It is unjust, that they have lived through thousands of years in hate, and only twenty in love. “I know. I know, love.”

He stands, clumsily for the chains still holding his ankles. “Come here.”

Link still paces, looking at the end of his rope. His emotions were always written plainly on his face, his heart worn on his sleeve. It is one of the things Gan loves most about him. He is different, more hesitant to show his feelings, but always ready to express his love to those who matter the most. Even now, he is more composed; his broken heart leaks through the facade, but he refuses to show any bitterness. He has shown enough for all his lifetimes. “Come here,” he repeats.

Link finally relaxes. He takes a few small steps to reach Gan, and lets himself be held again. Gan is significantly taller, Link's head only reaching his chest. Gan bends down, and cradles his cheek, wiping away a few wayward tears with his fingers.

“I can't lose you. I can't kill you. I can't.”

“Yes, you can. Because you're not killing me. You are saving me.”

He kisses Link, ever so gently, delicately, like the first one they shared. The memory is one of Gan's most cherished. As he was then, he is hesitant and careful; frightened to lose him, frightened to lose himself in him. It is a fear he has lived with his whole life. As if somehow, he has always known they would never be granted eternity.

Link kisses him back, lovingly. He runs his fingers through Gan's long hair. Gan speaks against his lips. “I've loved you since the first time I laid eyes on you,” he says once more, his voice quiet as a secret. He knows Link is ready to hear it.

“I loved you when I saved you from the sands, and took you home to our village.” He kisses Link's lips. “I loved you when our mothers and sisters raised you and embraced you as their own.” He kisses Link's neck. “I loved you when you left for three days, and I was worried sick, and when you came back you gifted me a wreath of wildflowers that did not grow in the desert. You said I deserved to see all the beauty in the world.” He kisses Link's forehead. “I loved you when you kissed me for the first time, that night under the stars. I froze, not from the cold; from the fear I had felt at the thought of kissing you first, terrified I would scare you off.” He kisses Link's lips a third time. “I loved you when you led me to your bed and we made love for the first time.”


	7. Chapter 7

Link relives every moment as Gan kisses them on his skin. All the memories take so much love in his heart, he's afraid it might burst.

“Link, the best thing I've ever done, in all my lives, is love you.”

For the first time in a long time, the use of his name isn't a warning or admonition: it is a reminder of the irrefutable bond they share, that Link was named for.

Link wishes he had a way with words, but they have never been his strength. He has always been envious of Gan's effortless skill for them. He doesn't know how to convey everything he feels, how to express the love he feels deep in his bones. Worse, he has no idea how to say goodbye. He shouldn't have to. They were supposed to have more time.

He tries anyway. “You're my whole life, you always were. You took me in, a half-dead Hylian boy that nobody wanted, when you could have left me to die in the desert. You brought me to your mothers and your sisters, and you gave me a family. I can never tell you enough how grateful I am to you. Don't you see? You're all I have. You're my entire world. I love you too. I love you so much it always hurts.” He has a feeling it always will.

He is conscious of what he has to do. He has to, because it will save everyone and everything. He has to, because Gan asked him to, and he could never refuse him. He has to, because he's the only one who can, and he knows this in his soul.

Link feels an alluring magic take over him. He was never sure of magic's existence until moments ago, when he faced the malice, witnessed Zelda as she healed him, remembered his old lives. This magic isn't the same – it's not like Zelda's, or the malice, it feels different, it feels like his own. It is like finding an old possession that he forgot about. He welcomes the magic as he recognizes it; it is the same magic the hero of legend – _himself_ – has wielded over the ages.

His hand lets go of Gan's body, opens, almost by its own accord. Link closes his eyes. He hears a playful, almost feminine chime. It is a sound he would know anywhere, he acknowledges the sword greeting him. The weight settles in his hand like an extension of his arm. He knows this sword like he knows his name. Holding it feels like coming home, and it feels like a farewell.

He opens his eyes. Considers it. It's beautiful, it's deadly, it's his, it's terrifying.

And he doesn't want it.

Gan looks down and actually _smiles._ This sword has killed him a hundred times, Link suspects this is the first time he has welcomed it.

They lock eyes as a purple glow begins to darken the cell. It is slow and inescapable.

It is time.

A newfound courage settles over Link. It holds his broken heart in place so he can accomplish his dreadful destiny.

Why does he get to save everyone but the one he loves? In so many lives, why does he only get to love Gan in this one? Why does he have to die, and by his lover's hand? Are the Goddesses playing a terrible cosmic joke on them?

What kind of deity would ever be this wicked?

“I am so sorry.”

“Don't be, my sweet love. At least I am with you, and that is the most important thing.” His lips settle on Link's one last time, before he takes a step back. A red hue threatens the gold in his eyes. “Promise me something.”

“Anything,” Link says, as he holds up the sword unhurriedly. He is unfamiliar with swords, but he feels he has wielded it his whole life. In many ways, he has.

“Live,” Gan asks, “live for us both, and tell me all about your life in our next one. Go back to our home for the both of us. And tell me one last time. . . .”

“I promise,” Link answers, though the thought of living without Gan seems inconceivable. Gan _is_ his home, and if he dies, Link doesn't have a home. But he will try, because he can't deny him. “I love you.”

Link drives the sword through Ganondorf's heart the second the malice rises. He doesn't let himself falter. It pierces an unhealed wound, red and purple blood weaving together, flowing freely onto Link's arm as he holds on to the weapon of the Goddesses.

Gruesome visions of Ganondorf's previous deaths assault Link's mind – the sword plunging through his chest, his head, his entire being flooded in Zelda's light, sealing him, eradicating him completely.

But Gan was wrong. This death isn't violent, this death is a choice, a mercy. Salvation. This time he was _loved_ instead of feared, caring instead of brutal.

Link's other arm reaches out to steady Gan when his knees threaten to give out. As delicately as he can, he withdraws the sword from his heart. The malice perishes and evaporates entirely. His golden eyes shine one last time, and as he looks at Link, he smiles.

“I love you,” Link whispers, as Gan takes his last breath, as himself, all traces of the evil dying with him. Link feels the instant his life ends, taking his heart with it.

Carefully, as if afraid he might still hurt him, he settles Gan's body on the floor. He lies his head on his body, and only then allows himself to cry. Blood and tears and heartbreak combine and menace to drown him.

He lets the sword fall to the ground. It chimes once, twice, and, its work done, fades away into thin air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm....very sorry...
> 
> thank you so much for reading, i hope you enjoyed it despite the angst! this is my first published fic in almost two years, and the longest i've ever finished. i'm very new to this ship, and also very obsessed
> 
> english isn't my native language, please don't hesitate to let me know if you spotted any mistakes. kudos and comments are always appreciated ♥


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